A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

I am new, How should I begin

I want to start small, what should I do to begin?

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Comment by Jack Rife on May 10, 2014 at 4:51pm: U-Tube, all kinds of info available. Type in Aquaponic and take off. Hundreds of sites to watch.

Comment by Jack Dunbar on May 8, 2014 at 9:21am: Good Morning Linda. Yes , I was a little overwhelmed at first but once I got it up and running, I realized that the system is very forgiving. I am hooked now. You can shop at the aquaponics store and get a small set up that's all built for you so you can get your feet wet. No pun intended...

Comment by Linda Simonton on May 8, 2014 at 12:00am: Thanks Jack... But Wow!! This sounds a little overwhelming.... I think the 1st step like you said is to determine whether inside or out. I live in Arizona so this would take some thinking... Thank you for all the resources you had given in your 1st post...

Comment by Jack Dunbar on May 7, 2014 at 11:25pm: Hi Linda. The first thing I would do is determine whether or not you are going to set up inside or out. I live in NH and our winters get pretty cold and quite a lot of snow so I chose to set up in my basement, In the meantime, I decided on which fish I enjoy and which veggies I like. I like cooking with herbs and I like fresh salads. I'm not fussy on fish so my choices were White Perch, Trout Catfish and Tilapia. My basement also contains my woodstove so heating my fish tank was going to be relatively easy. I heat my house and my domestic water with wood in the winter months so I'm leaning towards Tilapia as they like it warm. I had an open area of approx. size of 6x8 feet so I designed my system to fit in that area. I bought a 150 gal. Rubbermaid stock tank and built a shelf over it. I bought (2) 40 gal Rubbermaid stock tanks for my growbeds. These work good as they are approx. 13" deep. I built an auto syphon for each growbed. I filled them up to 11" deep with Hydrocorn. ( irregular shaped clay balls) I bought an aquarium water pump capable of pumping the 150 gal of water up to my 2 growbeds each hour. My pump runs 24/7 and when my growbeds fill to the height of my auto syphons, they drain my growbeds down into my fishtank. They stop when the growbed is near empty and the cycle starts over again. It takes approx. 12 minutes to fill and 3 minutes to drain. This is the basics.

Comment by Jack Dunbar on May 7, 2014 at 11:06am: Hi Linda, Ive been doing this for a little while now and I'm still a newby. I would start by purchasing Sylvia 's book " Aquaponic Gardening". It's a step by step guide on raising veggies and fish together. I also purchased "Small Scale Aquaculture" by Steven D. Van Gorder. This book came highly recommended by The NH Fish and Game Dept. It's a hobbyists guide to growing fish in greenhouses, recirculating systems, cages and flowing water. Join a few groups within this site and start asking questions. It is very addicting especially when you start harvesting fresh food. I have herbs growing in mine and my wife likes that she can just cut whatever she needs. I have a 5 year old who thinks he's going to go fishing.There 's a wealth of info here. Start small enough to handle and trust me, it will grow. I started with a 150 gal fish tank and (2) 40 gal grow beds and now I'm designing ( with a lot of info from this site) a greenhouse that I hope to use year round. I'm hooked and I love every minute of it. I find it relaxing. Good luck in whatever you decide... Take care....Jack